United States or Seychelles ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had got up, and with his thin sensitive lips twitching humorously, watched in the glass over the mantelpiece Mr Verloc backing out of the room heavily, hat and stick in hand. The door closed. The footman in trousers, appearing suddenly in the corridor, let Mr Verloc another way out and through a small door in the corner of the courtyard.
She remained thus mysteriously still and suddenly collected till Mr Verloc was heard with an accent of marital authority, and moving slightly to make room for her to sit on the edge of the sofa. “Come here,” he said in a peculiar tone, which might have been the tone of brutality, but, was intimately known to Mrs Verloc as the note of wooing.
He added: “I didn’t feel particularly gay sitting there and thinking of you.” He observed another slight shudder of his wife, which affected his sensibility. As she persisted in hiding her face in her hands, he thought he had better leave her alone for a while. On this delicate impulse Mr Verloc withdrew into the parlour again, where the gas jet purred like a contented cat.
Unexpectedly Mrs Verloc had desecrated the unbroken reserved decency of her home by a shrill and terrible shriek. “Help, Tom! Save me. I won’t be hanged!” He rushed forward, groping for her mouth with a silencing hand, and the shriek died out. But in his rush he had knocked her over.
She started forward at once, as if she were still a loyal woman bound to that man by an unbroken contract. Her right hand skimmed slightly the end of the table, and when she had passed on towards the sofa the carving knife had vanished without the slightest sound from the side of the dish. Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the floor, and was content. He waited. Mrs Verloc was coming.
The mother, with her feet propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap. She had never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc. It was very sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but her girl might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age.
And incredible as it may appear, the eyes of Mrs Verloc seemed to grow still larger. The audible wish of Mr Verloc’s overflowing heart flowed into an empty place in his wife’s memory. Greenwich Park. A park! That’s where the boy was killed. A park—smashed branches, torn leaves, gravel, bits of brotherly flesh and bone, all spouting up together in the manner of a firework.
“I don’t know what you mean,” remarked his wife in a tone perfectly casual, but standing stock still between the table and the cupboard. “You know you can trust me,” Mr Verloc remarked to the grate, with hoarse feeling. Mrs Verloc turned slowly towards the cupboard, saying with deliberation: “Oh yes. I can trust you.” And she went on with her methodical proceedings.
A man somewhat over forty may be excusably thrown into considerable disorder by the prospect of losing his employment, especially if the man is a secret agent of political police, dwelling secure in the consciousness of his high value and in the esteem of high personages. He was excusable. Now the thing had ended in a crash. Mr Verloc was cool; but he was not cheerful.
And across the length of the table covered with brown oil-cloth Winnie, his wife, talked evenly at him the wifely talk, as artfully adapted, no doubt, to the circumstances of this return as the talk of Penelope to the return of the wandering Odysseus. Mrs Verloc, however, had done no weaving during her husband’s absence.
Word Of The Day